In Gaza, Palestinians torn between pressing on and ending fight

JABALIYA, Gaza Strip — Stepping over his daughter's mangled teddy bear and pink bedroom curtains, math teacher Hossam Dadah salvaged what he could from the wreckage of his home and said he's had enough.

Two of his children were hospitalized after Israeli airstrikes destroyed the three-story house next door, which was owned by a Hamas official.

"This has to end," said Dadah, his black hair covered with concrete dust from the explosion. Hamas should quit while it's ahead, he said.

Not far away in Gaza City, policeman Mohamed Abu Islam peered into the massive crater left by an Israeli strike on the city's sports stadium and insisted that Gazans should press forward with the conflict.

"We can't stop now," he said. "If Israel wants a long-term truce, this time there must be conditions that improve our lives, such as lifting the blockade on the borders and the sea."

The conflicting views of ordinary Palestinians summed up the calculation now facing Hamas, the Islamist group that has been struggling for five years to find a balance between its roots as a resistance army and its responsibility for governing the Gaza Strip.

The fourth day of violence Saturday left civilians on both sides digging out of the rubble. By late evening, there were signs of progress toward a possible cease-fire agreement being brokered in Cairo.

Israel expanded its targets to include several high-profile Hamas institutions, including Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh's headquarters, a police compound, the Interior Ministry and the home of an Interior Ministry official.

Hamas headquarters was a twisted pile of glass and concrete, reeking of fuel from an exploded generator. Hamas supporters planted several Palestinian flags in the wreckage. Israeli officials, who released video of the airstrike, said a secondary explosion proved the building was being used to store munitions.

Gaza hospital officials said the death toll from four days of airstrikes had increased to 40, including 11 children. Three Israelis have died.

After appearing to moderate its behavior after the last Israeli assault of Gaza four years ago, Hamas is surprising many this time with its aggressive tactics.

Ignoring red lines set by Israel, Hamas aimed rockets at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem for the first time, knowing such moves could trigger another ground assault on the Gaza Strip. The Israeli military said 160 rockets were fired toward Israel on Saturday. Israel's Iron Dome defense system shot down one targeting Tel Aviv.

Israeli officials called Hamas' actions a sign of desperation. But others see them as a strategy aimed at drawing Israel into a high-profile conflict that Hamas hopes to leverage into an Israeli concession to lift its restrictions on the movement of goods and people.

"It seems to me they are going all the way to brinksmanship," said Mukhaimar Abu Saada, political science professor at Al Azhar University in Gaza City. By creating an international crisis, its leaders hope that "at the end of this war, Hamas will be much more legitimate, politically speaking," he said.

In the cease-fire talks in Egypt, Hamas is demanding that Israel agree to end the border blockade and promise to stop targeted killings of its leaders, a Hamas official said. Israel has not confirmed that talks are underway, or revealed its conditions for a truce.

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi said that he was working with Arab countries, Turkey, the U.S. and others on efforts to stop the fighting, but that there were no guarantees. The White House said President Obama was in touch with Egyptian and Turkish officials.

If an agreement is not reached, Hamas leaders are betting that the new Egyptian government, controlled by a more friendly Islamist president, won't stand by if Israel launches a ground invasion, Abu Saada said.

It remains to be seen whether Hamas' gamble will pay off. Egypt's prime minister made a high-profile visit to Gaza on Friday and Tunisia's foreign minister arrived Saturday.

"That which [Israel] was able to do previously is no longer allowed," said Tunisian Foreign Minister Rafik Abdessalem.

But so far the strong statements from new post-"Arab Spring" governments have not been matched with strong actions.

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Israel's Rocket-Hunting Ace Got His Start Playing <em>Warcraft</em>

War has once again erupted between Hamas and the Israel Defense Forces, with the Gaza-based militant group launching hundreds of rockets and missiles at Israeli towns. But many of these projectiles never made it to their targets, thanks to the new Iron Dome missile defense system that’s arguably become this conflict’s most important technological difference-maker. This article, first published in April, tracks the story of Iron Dome’s most prolific “gunner.” While his record for shooting down missiles and rockets has by now undoubtedly fallen, the tale still gives insight into the battle now gripping Israel and Gaza.

KFAR GVIROL, Israel — While many of the boys in Idan Yahya’s high school class were buffing up and preparing themselves for selection into elite combat units, this gawky teenager was spending “a lot of time” playing Warcraft — the real-time strategy computer game where opposing players command virtual armies in a battle to dominate the fictional world of Azeroth.

Four years later, the high school jocks who sweated it out in pre-military academies so they could make the cut into the Israel Defense Force’s Special Operations units are now crawling through the sand dunes on the outskirts of the Gaza Strip and watching while Idan knocks rockets out of the sky hundreds of meters above their heads. Idan Yahya, 22, an Iron Dome “gunner” in the Active Air Defense Wing 167, currently holds the record for the number of rockets intercepted: eight.

People in the army describe him variously as a geek and an ace. But the geek who grew up playing Warcraft is now a highly prized soldier on the cutting edge of real war craft. He’s the Israeli army’s top rocket interceptor.

The Iron Dome is a mobile anti-rocket interception system that Israel moves around the country to shoot down the rockets fired at its civilian population centers by armed groups in Gaza and southern Lebanon. Its radar picks up launches and fires interceptor missiles at them if they’re calculated to be heading towards populated centers. The system has become increasingly important as Hamas, Hezbollah and other groups amass surface-to-surface missiles to hit the Israeli home front with, thus bypassing the Israel Defense Force’s overwhelming advantage of concentrated firepower and fighter aircraft. Should Israel attack Iran’s nuclear installations, the expected rocket reprisals from the armed groups on its borders will keep Iron Dome very, very busy.

As the war between Israelis and Arabs enters its sixth decade (or its 500th depending on who you ask), it is increasingly becoming a hi-tech rocket war. The IDF’s Director of Military Intelligence Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi in February said there were 200,000 rockets aimed at Israel from the south, north and east. And in this increasingly technological battlefield of rockets, anti-rocket interceptors, radars, control rooms, drones and drone hacking, it is soldiers like Idan Yahya (and whoever his counterparts on the Arab side are) who are making the most impact.

Computer geek, keyboard combatant, soldier, call him what you will, Idan and others like him man the controls of the latest rock star in advanced military technology. “There are a lot of flashing blips, signs, symbols, colors and pictures on the screen. You look at your tactical map; see where the threat is coming from. You have to make sure you’re locked onto the right target. There’s a lot of information and there is very little time. It definitely reminds me of Warcraft and other online strategy games,” Idan says.

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Jon Stewart tells Bill O’Reilly to stop worrying about loss of “traditional America”

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Jon Stewart has a message for Fox News host Bill O’Reilly — chill out about the loss of “traditional America.”

“The Daily Show” funnyman skewered the right-leaning network on Thursday for treating the re-election of President Barack Obama – a victory aided by minority voters – as a cataclysm for the white men who were once in the driver’s seat in America. Stewart implied that this longing on behalf of some of the network’s commentators for a Grover’s Corners past may not be rooted in reality.

“Yes Bill,” Stewart said. “Obama’s re-election marked the moment that traditional America ended. The moment when the family from the 1950s sitcom ‘Leave it to Beaver’ ceased to be real.”

Moreover, Stewart said that ethnic demographics are constantly shifting in the United States and that such changes can be a little troublesome for the folks who were in control.

“You don’t need to worry so much,” Stewart counseled. “What you are demonstrating is the health and vitality of America’s greatest tradition – a fevered, frightened ruling class lamenting the rise of a new ethnically and religiously diverse new class. One that will destroy all that is virtuous and good and bring the American experiment crashing to the ground.”

He added that those rising ethnic groups work so hard so that their children and grandchildren have the opportunity to be intolerant of new immigrant populations. Thus the circle of life continues.

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Well: Meatless Main Dishes for a Holiday Table

Most vegetarian diners are happy to fill their plates with delicious sides and salads, but if you want to make them feel special, consider one of these main course vegetarian dishes from Martha Rose Shulman. All of them are inspired by Greek cooking, which has a rich tradition of vegetarian meals.

I know that Greek food is not exactly what comes to mind when you hear the word “Thanksgiving,” yet why not consider this cuisine if you’re searching for a meatless main dish that will please a crowd? It’s certainly a better idea, in my mind, than Tofurky and all of the other overprocessed attempts at making a vegan turkey. If you want to serve something that will be somewhat reminiscent of a turkey, make the stuffed acorn squashes in this week’s selection, and once they’re out of the oven, stick some feathers in the “rump,” as I did for the first vegetarian Thanksgiving I ever cooked: I stuffed and baked a huge crookneck squash, then decorated it with turkey feathers. The filling wasn’t nearly as good as the one you’ll get this week, but the creation was fun.

Here are five new vegetarian recipes for your Thanksgiving table — or any time.

Giant Beans With Spinach, Tomatoes and Feta: This delicious, dill-infused dish is inspired by a northern Greek recipe from Diane Kochilas’s wonderful new cookbook, “The Country Cooking of Greece.”

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Northern Greek Mushroom and Onion Pie: Meaty portobello mushrooms make this a very substantial dish.

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Roasted Eggplant and Chickpeas With Cinnamon-Tinged Tomato Sauce and Feta: This fragrant and comforting dish can easily be modified for vegans.

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Coiled Greek Winter Squash Pie: The extra time this beautiful vegetable pie takes to assemble is worth it for a holiday dinner.

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Baked Acorn Squash Stuffed With Wild Rice and Kale Risotto: Serve one squash to each person at your Thanksgiving meal: They’ll be like miniature vegetarian (or vegan) turkeys.

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Privatizing Greece, Slowly but Not Surely

Eirini Vourloumis for The International Herald Tribune

Potential privatization hit a wall at Katakolo, a seaside town where Christos Konstantopoulos paused near abandoned beachfront homes. More Photos »

THE government inspectors set out from Athens for what they thought was a pristine patch of coastline on the Ionian Sea. Their mission was to determine how much money that sun-kissed shore, owned by the Greek government, might sell for under a sweeping privatization program demanded by the nation’s restive creditors.

What the inspectors found was 7,000 homes — none of which were supposed to be there. They had been thrown up without ever having been recorded in a land registry.

“If the government wanted to privatize here, they would have to bulldoze everything,” says Makis Paraskevopoulos, the local mayor. “And that’s never going to happen.”

Athens agreed. It scratched the town, Katakolo, off a list of potential properties to sell. But as Greece redoubles its efforts to raise billions to cut its debt and stoke its economy, the situation in Katakolo illustrates the daunting hurdles ahead.

In the three years since the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission — the so-called troika of lenders — first required Greece to sell state assets, a mere 1.6 billion euros have been raised. Last Tuesday, European leaders said Greece needed an additional 15 billion euros in aid through 2014 to meet debt-reduction targets — partly because Athens has failed to make money on privatization.

Now, the troika may consider cutting an already lowered target for Greece to raise 19 billion euros by 2015 to about 10 billion euros as investors worry that Greece may have to leave the euro. The troika is requiring that Greece must still raise 50 billion through privatizations by 2022.

The I.M.F. estimates that those funds, should they materialize, will trim only up to 1 percent from Greece’s debt, which is expected to rise to a staggering 189 percent of the nation’s economic output in 2013, from 175 percent this year.

But with Greece’s economy headed into its sixth year of recession, and unemployment at 25 percent, the nation’s immediate goal is to lure any investment it can through long-term leases on state properties to create jobs and get money flowing into depleted public coffers.

“This could put the economy back in motion,” says Andreas Taprantzis, the executive director of the Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund, a new agency set up to hasten privatization. If investors develop land, restructure highways or build business parks, the activity would “help employment, which is a major issue for Greece,” he says.

Indeed, privatization is one of the last hopes here for luring foreign cash.

Efforts stumbled anew last summer, when the government fell and two chaotic elections were held, amplifying fears of what is known in financial circles as a “Grexit” — a Greek exit from the euro. Investor confidence fell so low that a recent survey by the BDO consulting firm found that Greece was considered more risky for investment than Syria.

Yet as Prime Minister Antonis Samaras took steps last week to secure an additional 31.5 billion euros of bailout money from creditors, the thinking is that if one major asset can be sold now, investors will feel better about spending their money on Greece.

OFFICIALS are trotting out Greece’s most tempting offer: OPAP, the highly profitable gambling company in which the government has a major stake. Its gambling agencies abound around Athens and in Greek villages. Last week, as the government went on a road show to China to drum up investor interest, eight bids landed, including one from a Chinese concern.

Still, Mr. Taprantzis’s agency faces a daunting task. The idea of the country selling off its crown jewels touches a raw nerve here. Many Greeks say the government is buckling to decrees from the troika. Citizen protests have flared over nearly every state asset up for offer, including ones that have long bled cash — even if shedding them would help Greece’s finances.

Others say the government is so desperate that prime assets will be sold too cheaply. In the case of OPAP, Greeks grumble about the government’s logic in selling one of the few things that brings a steady stream of money to the treasury.

Given the culture of clientelism that pervades business dealings in Greece, others are concerned that properties will wind up in the hands of powerful Greek oligarchs who, these critics worry, may be waiting for an opportunity to get them at a cut-rate price.

Dimitris Bounias contributed reporting.

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UCLA's Shabazz Muhammad cleared by NCAA, eligible to compete now

UCLA freshman Shabazz Muhammad is eligible to play for the Bruins men's basketball immediately, the NCAA announced Friday when it reinstated him after hearing an appeal from the university.

Muhammad, a 6-foot-6 swingman listed by many as the nation’s top high school recruit last year, will travel with UCLA to New York on Saturday for its games in the Legends Classic tournament, and he's expected to make his college debut Monday when the No. 13 Bruins (3-0) play Georgetown (2-0).

“I am excited to be able to play for UCLA starting next Monday," Muhammad said in a statement.

"My family and friends were very supportive of me throughout this process and I couldn’t have gone through this without them.”

The 5 p.m. PST game will be held at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn and will be televised on ESPN2. 

"Look out New York City," said Bill Trosch, the attorney for the Muhammad family.

The Las Vegas native has yet to play for the Bruins this season after the NCAA declared him ineligible on Nov. 9 for violating its amateurism rules following an investigation that spanned more than a year.

“I am relieved that this long, arduous process has come to an end," UCLA Coach Ben Howland said in a statment. "So many people worked very hard on this case and I am eternally grateful to them as well as the Bruin family, who stood by us throughout. I am pleased that Shabazz will be able to begin his collegiate career.” 

Said Trosch: "There were many times during the investigation that my faith in the NCAA wavered. I understand the NCAA’s ruling, and am grateful that they have done the right thing, allowing Shabazz back on the court."

In its Nov. 9 ruling, the NCAA said that in addition to other "pending issues," Muhammad accepted airfare and lodging for three unofficial recruiting visits. The visits, to Duke and North Carolina, were paid for by financial advisor Benjamin Lincoln.

The Muhammad family has said Lincoln is a longtime family friend whose assistance should be allowed under NCAA rules.

The school and NCAA enforcement agreed on the facts of the case, and therefore it was determined by the NCAA that Muhammad couldn’t play in UCLA's season opener against Indiana State, said a person with knowledge of the situation who is not allowed to speak publicly about it.

But UCLA disagreed that a violation occurred and formally appealed the NCAA’s decision earlier this week.

The NCAA appeals committee had a hearing Friday with UCLA and, after several hours, a decision was rendered. 

In a statement, the NCAA said that UCLA acknowledged amateurism violations occurred and asked the NCAA on Friday to reinstate Muhammad with conditions.

The school required Muhammad to sit 10% of the season (three games) and to repay about $1,600 in impermissible benefits, the approximate cost of the three unofficial trips paid for by Lincoln.

But because Muhammad has already sat out three games, he has served his suspension and is eligible to compete immediately.

"I’m delighted that Shabazz can join the team on Monday and hopefully will have a successful season with UCLA," said Robert Orr, Muhammad's attorney. "I’m appreciative of the tenacious effort by the UCLA administration to try and help Shabazz in this. They’re to be commended for all they’ve done."

UCLA Athletic Director Dan Guerrero said the Bruins family is "extremely grateful" the matter is over.

"This entire process has been challenging on many fronts, but we believe strongly in the principles of fairness, integrity and due process," he said in a statement.

"We are satisfied with the outcome and pleased that Shabazz will be able to join his teammates on the floor, representing UCLA in Brooklyn on Monday night.” 

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So You Want in on the Music Biz? Fred Wilson Has 4 Things to Tell You

Not only is Union Square Ventures partner Fred Wilson the godfather of the New York startup scene, he also loves music. So who better than this self-proclaimed music nut to talk about the future of music and technology, and how companies straddling both have a shot at making money.

At the Billboard FutureSound conference in San Francisco this week, Wilson laid out four guiding principals for would-be music moguls. All you Russell Simmons wannabes, here you go.

1. It’s more expensive than you think, and it takes longer than you want.

Unlike a typical software startup that can get up and running with $500,000, music startups often need at least $5 million and up to $20 million just to get started, says Wilson. Much of that money goes towards licensing music content from the copyright holder, which is usually a record label. “The startup costs for a legal and legitimate music service are extremely high relative to any other sector,” he says. Translation: VCs have plenty of other cheap sectors to go hunting for promising startups, so funding for music startups is hard to come by.

Union Square Ventures‘ two music plays are group listening service Turntable.fm and social MP3 sharing site SoundCloud, both of which received sizable rounds from the firm. Turntable.fm has raised $7 million from Union Square and others, and SoundCloud banked $10 million in its Wilson-led second round of funding.

Unlike many web-based startups (mobile and otherwise), which latch on to massive distribution platforms offered by Facebook, Google and Apple, music streaming or discovery services can’t go global on day one because of copyright protections and country-specific licensing contracts.

Turntable.fm learned that lesson the hard way. When the service launched in 2011 it blew up thanks to its slick design and mobile-friendly approach. But the startup quickly learned that it was illegally offering music to overseas listeners. It immediately shut off service to international customers, and two-thirds of its users disappeared. The company is now hammering agreements with individual countries and record labels to stream music legally, but it’s going to be a long and tedious process, says Wilson.

2. No matter how many users you have, massive valuations are fleeting if you can’t make money – even if you are Spotify and Pandora.

Spotify recently banked $100 million from Goldman Sachs, valuing the company at $3 billion. Even though Pandora has been trading down 46 percent from its 2011 debut, the company still has a $1.21 billion market cap. But those valuations will disappear if neither company can stem their operating losses, and fast, says Wilson.

A PrivCo report shows that while Spotify earned $244 million in revenue during 2011, the company lost $60 million in the same period. Even though a leaked report says that Spotify’s revenue could double in 2012, if the company losses keep climbing, Wilson says Spotify’s value won’t stay in the billions forever. “Spotify is probably not worth $3 billion,” he says. “It might be worth something, someday to someone, but if they still can’t figure how to make money, they’ll lose.”

Pandora faces the same struggle as Spotify, trying to get users, not advertisers, to pay for its service. For the second quarter of its 2013 fiscal year, the company booked $101.3 million in revenue, but lost $5.4 million. Though its advertising revenue remains strong at $89.4 million, it is having a hard time converting freeloading listeners into paid subscribers, despite its own ad attempts. “Pandora will not be worth billions for long if they are losing money,” Wilson says.

3. That said, Pandora has the right idea. Advertising dollars will move increasingly to internet radio, and artists will start to make money from their music.

FM radio advertising is a $17 billion market, and Wilson believes that as Internet radio services like Pandora, Songza, and Rdio take the place of traditional broadcast, those ad dollars will move online. That’s good for online radio streaming startups, but even better for the artists whose music is played over these apps and websites.

When a song is played on the radio, the artists gets a royalty. But to play a song over Rdio or Pandora, those companies must pay licensing costs and higher royalties, which go right back to the artists. Pandora has said that it pays out $1 million to Adele, Coldplay, and others.

Wilson is optimistic that as more music enthusiasts ditch radios for apps, more money will find its way to artists. That might be the case for radio apps now, but that could easily change as Pandora has been looking for ways to reduce its royalty costs. The company recently sued the American Society for Composers, Authors and Publishers, a major royalty collection agency, seeking lower licensing fees. Pandora is also lobbying Congress to pass the Internet Radio Fairness Act to bring down it’s licensing costs, a piece of legislation that many artists oppose.

4. Selling virtual goods might be a better business than selling music.

Wilson would be remiss to not plug his own investment in Turntable.fm during his keynote. If you’re not familiar with the service, users create themed music rooms, like “I Love the 80s” or “Indiescribable,” which they join as a virtual DJ. Others join the room as listeners, and influence which songs are played based on a thumbs-up/thumbs-down voting system. Too many down-votes will force the song to skip to a new one on the playlist, but up-votes earn you “DJ points,” credits you can use to unlock new avatars.

Turntable.fm doesn’t charge its users for a subscription and doesn’t serve ads. Though it’s not bringing in revenue right now, there is talk of charging for DJ points, so anyone can get a little bit of cred without getting up on the virtual DJ platform.

While that will surely vex some current Turntable.fm users, charging for virtual goods might be the next big revenue-earning tool for music businesses. “Ads can carry a lot of the load, but not all,” says Wilson. “Turntable.fm’s virtual goods model could work well as a new revenue stream for other music businesses.”

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New Variety owner Jay Penske slashes one-quarter staff

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Jay Penske, the new owner of Variety, laid off nearly a quarter of the company’s staff on Thursday.

Between 20 and 25 employees from the struggling Hollywood trade’s circulation, database and conference departments were laid off. The editorial staff was not affected. Variety had about 120 employees before Thursday’s cuts.

“Without a doubt, this is a challenging day, and I particularly wanted to notify and acknowledge those of you who will be saying goodbye to valued colleagues and friends,” Penske, the CEO of Penske Media Corporation wrote in a memo obtained by the industry blog Deadline, which he also owns. “As we look ahead, Variety’s business holds almost limitless potential and I will remain available to answer any questions you might have regarding today’s changes and our future.”

Penske bought the paper last month at the fire-sale price of $ 25 million. In his memo, Penske said that he planned to invest in the editorial and digital departments while trimming the database services and business branch.

The jobs eliminated came from the LA411 and NY411 units – directories for production resources – and its administration and conference units, according to the memo. Deadline said that the cuts totaled 20 to 25 employees.

He also cut circulation staff, in what may presage a move to cut back on the paper’s printing schedule. Variety currently prints daily during the week and a weekly edition on Friday.

TheWrap previously reported that Penske planned to maintain the print edition and drop the paywall that blocked non-subscribers from reading Variety’s site, placing it in direct competition with competitors like the Hollywood Reporter, TheWrap and its corporate sister Deadline. The paywall has since been torn down.

Neither Penske nor Variety returned calls or emails from TheWrap requesting comment.

Here’s the full memo:

Dear Team

For the past six months, we have diligently reviewed every aspect of the Variety business. And in more recent weeks, we have outlined to Variety senior management an exciting and also aggressive trajectory for the brand’s resurgence. These steps will include substantial further investment in editorial and digital, but will unfortunately require some immediate eliminations in the following business units: LA411/NY411, Circ, Systems, Conferences, and Admin.

Without a doubt, this is a challenging day, and I particularly wanted to notify and acknowledge those of you who will be saying goodbye to valued colleagues and friends. As we look ahead, Variety’s business holds almost limitless potential and I will remain available to answer any questions you might have regarding today’s changes and our future. As always, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me, or see Tammy Chase to arrange an appointment.

Sincerely,

Jay Penske

CEO

Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Personal Health: Quitting Smoking for Good

Few smokers would claim that it’s easy to quit. The addiction to nicotine is strong and repeatedly reinforced by circumstances that prompt smokers to light up.

Yet the millions who have successfully quit are proof that a smoke-free life is achievable, even by those who have been regular, even heavy, smokers for decades.

Today, 19 percent of American adults smoke, down from more than 42 percent half a century ago, when Luther Terry, the United States surgeon general, formed a committee to produce the first official report on the health effects of smoking. Ever-increasing restrictions on where people can smoke have helped to swell the ranks of former smokers.

Now, however, as we approach the American Cancer Society’s 37th Great American Smokeout on Thursday, the decline in adult smoking has stalled despite the economic downturn and the soaring price of cigarettes.

Currently, 45 million Americans are regular smokers who, if they remain smokers, can on average expect to live 10 fewer years. Half will die of a tobacco-related disease, and many others will suffer for years with smoking-caused illness. Smoking adds $96 billion to the annual cost of medical care in this country, Dr. Nancy A. Rigotti wrote in The Journal of the American Medical Association last month. Even as some adult smokers quit, their ranks are being swelled by the 800,000 teenagers who become regular smokers each year and by young adults who, through advertising and giveaways, are now the prime targets of the tobacco industry.

People ages 18 to 25 now have the nation’s highest smoking rate: about 34 percent counted in the National Survey on Drug Use and Health in 2010 reported smoking cigarettes in the previous month. I had to hold my breath the other day as dozens of 20-somethings streamed out of art gallery openings and lighted up. Do they not know how easy it is to get hooked on nicotine and how challenging it can be to escape this addiction?

Challenging, yes, but by no means impossible. On the Web you can download a “Guide to Quitting Smoking,” with detailed descriptions of all the tools and tips to help you become an ex-smoker once and for all.

Or consult the new book by Dr. Richard Brunswick, a retired family physician in Northampton, Mass., who says he’s helped hundreds of people escape the clutches of nicotine and smoking. (The printable parts of the book’s provocative title are “Can’t Quit? You Can Stop Smoking.”)

“There is no magic pill or formula for beating back nicotine addiction,” Dr. Brunswick said. “However, with a better understanding of why you smoke and the different tools you can use to control the urge to light up, you can stop being a slave to your cigarettes.”

Addiction and Withdrawal

Nicotine beats a direct path to the brain, where it provides both relaxation and a small energy boost. But few smokers realize that the stress and lethargy they are trying to relieve are a result of nicotine withdrawal, not some underlying distress. Break the addiction, and the ill feelings are likely to dissipate.

Physical withdrawal from nicotine is short-lived. Four days without it and the worst is over, with remaining symptoms gone within a month, Dr. Brunswick said. But emotional and circumstantial tugs to smoke can last much longer.

Depending on when and why you smoke, cues can include needing a break from work, having to focus on a challenging task, drinking coffee or alcohol, being with other people who smoke or in places you associate with smoking, finishing a meal or sexual activity, and feeling depressed or upset.

To break such links, you must first identify them and then replace them with other activities, like taking a walk, chewing sugar-free gum or taking deep breaths. These can help you control cravings until the urge passes.

If you’ve failed at quitting before, try to identify what went wrong and do things differently this time, Dr. Brunswick suggests. Most smokers need several attempts before they can become permanent ex-smokers.

Perhaps most important is to be sure you are serious about quitting; if not, wait until you are. Motivation is half the battle. Also, should you slip and have a cigarette after days or weeks of not smoking, don’t assume you’ve failed and give up. Just go right back to not smoking.

Aids for Quitting

Many if not most smokers need two kinds of assistance to become lasting ex-smokers: psychological support and medicinal aids. Only about 4 percent to 7 percent of people are able to quit smoking on any given attempt without help, the cancer society says.

All 50 states and the District of Columbia have free telephone-based support programs that connect would-be quitters to trained counselors. Together, you can plan a stop-smoking method that suits your smoking pattern and helps you avoid common pitfalls.

Online support groups and Nicotine Anonymous can help as well. To find a group, ask a local hospital or call the cancer society at (800) 227-2345. Consider telling relatives and friends about your intention to quit, and plan to spend time in smoke-free settings.

More than a dozen treatments can help you break the physical addiction to tobacco. Most popular is nicotine replacement therapy, sold both with and without a prescription. The Food and Drug Administration has approved five types: nicotine patches of varying strengths, gums, sprays, inhalers and lozenges that can curb withdrawal symptoms and help you gradually reduce your dependence on nicotine.

Two prescription drugs are also effective: an extended-release form of the antidepressant bupropion (Zyban or Wellbutrin), which reduces nicotine cravings, and varenicline (Chantix), which blocks nicotine receptors in the brain, reducing both the pleasurable effects of smoking and the symptoms of nicotine withdrawal. Combining a nicotine replacement with one of these drugs is often more effective than either approach alone.

Other suggested techniques, like hypnosis and acupuncture, have helped some people quit but lack strong proof of their effectiveness. Tobacco lozenges and pouches and nicotine lollipops and lip balms lack evidence as quitting aids, and no clinical trials have been published showing that electronic cigarettes can help people quit.

The cancer society suggests picking a “quit day”; ridding your home, car and workplace of smoking paraphernalia; choosing a stop-smoking plan, and stocking up on whatever aids you may need.

On the chosen day, keep active; drink lots of water and juices; use a nicotine replacement; change your routine if possible; and avoid alcohol, situations you associate with smoking and people who are smoking.

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This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 16, 2012

An earlier version of this column stated imprecisely the rate of smoking among young adults. According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, in 2010 about 34 percent of people ages 18 to 25 smoked cigarettes in the month before the survey -- not daily. (About 16 percent of them reported smoking daily, according to the survey.)

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 14, 2012

An earlier version of this column misstated the rate of smoking among young adults. According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, in 2010 about 34 percent of people ages 18 to 25 smoked cigarettes, not 40 percent. (That is the share of young adults who use tobacco products of any kind, according to the survey.)

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Trying to Keep Your E-Mails Secret When the C.I.A. Chief Couldn’t

If David H. Petraeus couldn’t keep his affair from prying eyes as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, then how is the average American to keep a secret?

In the past, a spymaster might have placed a flower pot with a red flag on his balcony or drawn a mark on page 20 of his mistress’s newspaper. Instead, Mr. Petraeus used Gmail. And he got caught.

Granted, most people don’t have the Federal Bureau of Investigation sifting through their personal e-mails, but privacy experts say people grossly underestimate how transparent their digital communications have become.

“What people don’t realize is that hacking and spying went mainstream a decade ago,” said Dan Kaminsky, an Internet security researcher. “They think hacking is some difficult thing. Meanwhile, everyone is reading everyone else’s e-mails — girlfriends are reading boyfriends’, bosses are reading employees’ — because it’s just so easy to do.”

Face it: no matter what you are trying to hide in your e-mail in-box or text message folder — be it an extramarital affair or company trade secrets — it is possible that someone will find out. If it involves criminal activity or litigation, the odds increase because the government has search and subpoena powers that can be used to get any and all information, whether it is stored on your computer or, as is more likely these days, stored in the cloud. And lawyers for the other side in a lawsuit can get reams of documents in court-sanctioned discovery.

Still determined? Thought so. You certainly are not alone, as there are legitimate reasons that people want to keep private all types of information and communications that are not suspicious (like the contents of your will, for example, or a chronic illness). In that case, here are your best shots at hiding the skeletons in your digital closet.

KNOW YOUR ADVERSARY. Technically speaking, the undoing of Mr. Petraeus was not the extramarital affair, per se, it was that he misunderstood the threat. He and his mistress/biographer, Paula Broadwell, may have thought the threat was their spouses snooping through their e-mails, not the F.B.I. looking through Google’s e-mail servers.

“Understanding the threat is always the most difficult part of security technology,” said Matthew Blaze, an associate professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania and a security and cryptography specialist. “If they believed the threat to be a government with the ability to get their login records from a service provider, not just their spouse, they might have acted differently.”

To hide their affair from their spouses, the two reportedly limited their digital communications to a shared Gmail account. They did not send e-mails, but saved messages to the draft folder instead, ostensibly to avoid a digital trail. It is unlikely either of their spouses would have seen it.

But neither took necessary steps to hide their computers’ I.P. addresses. According to published accounts of the affair, Ms. Broadwell exposed the subterfuge when she used the same computer to send harassing e-mails to a woman in Florida, Jill Kelley, who sent them to a friend at the F.B.I.

Authorities matched the digital trail from Ms. Kelley’s e-mails — some had been sent via hotel Wi-Fi networks — to hotel guest lists. In crosschecking lists of hotel guests, they arrived at Ms. Broadwell and her computer, which led them to more e-mail accounts, including the one she shared with Mr. Petraeus.

HIDE YOUR LOCATION The two could have masked their I.P. addresses using Tor, a popular privacy tool that allows anonymous Web browsing. They could have also used a virtual private network, which adds a layer of security to public Wi-Fi networks like the one in your hotel room.

By not doing so, Mr. Blaze said, “they made a fairly elementary mistake.” E-mail providers like Google and Yahoo keep login records, which reveal I.P. addresses, for 18 months, during which they can easily be subpoenaed. The Fourth Amendment requires the authorities to get a warrant from a judge to search physical property. Rules governing e-mail searches are far more lax: Under the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, a warrant is not required for e-mails six months old or older. Even if e-mails are more recent, the federal government needs a search warrant only for “unopened” e-mail, according to the Department of Justice’s manual for electronic searches. The rest requires only a subpoena.

Google reported that United States law enforcement agencies requested data for 16,281 accounts from January to June of this year, and it complied in 90 percent of cases.

GO OFF THE RECORD At bare minimum, choose the “off the record” feature on Google Talk, Google’s instant messaging client, which ensures that nothing typed is saved or searchable in either person’s Gmail account.

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Investigators find major flaws in L.A. Fire Department data

A long-awaited review of the Los Angeles Fire Department found the agency relied on inaccurate data, which provided the public with an erroneous portrait of the department’s performance that was used to make critical staffing decisions.

“All prior reporting data should not be relied upon until they are properly recalculated and validated,” the task force appointed by Fire Chief Brian Cummings concluded.

While the Fire Department has acknowledged some mistakes in its data, the 32-page report found more widespread problems and delves more deeply into a series of factors that contributed to the faulty figures. Among other things, the experts found systemic flaws in a 30-year-old computerized dispatch network and a lack of adequate training for firefighters assigned to complex data analysis.

INTERACTIVE: Check response times in your L.A. neighborhood

The probe was launched after department officials acknowledged earlier this year that LAFD performance reports released to City Hall leaders and the public made it appear rescuers were getting to emergencies faster than they actually were.

The task force report, scheduled to be discussed Tuesday by the Fire Commission, said the department has corrected the computer-system flaws that led to the inaccurate figures.

“The No. 1 goal was to restore confidence in the Fire Department's statistics in the eyes of the public and city leaders,” said Fire Commissioner Alan Skobin, who helped oversee the report. “We now have the ability to identify and pull out accurate data.”

Still, the report paints a picture of a department woefully behind in using technology to help speed up emergency responses and improve efficiency by analyzing thousands of dispatch records that churn through the department's computer system each day.

The report recommends installing GPS devices on fire units so dispatchers know their location at all times, an upgrade that has been discussed since at least 2009. That could ensure that the closest rescuers are sent to those in need.

The task force also said upgrades or replacement of the aging computer system at the heart of dispatch operations may be needed, as well as hiring professional analysts to scrutinize the data.

Some money has been set aside to help pay for the GPS upgrade and the dispatch system changes. But whether all the changes raised in the report could be funded is unclear, given that the LAFD already is projected to run a $5.2-million deficit in its current budget.

The report’s findings in some ways parallel recent probes by City Controller Wendy Greuel and Jeffrey Godown, an expert brought in by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa as questions grew about the department’s performance figures.

The task force includes members of the chief’s own staff, as well as experts from USC, the RAND Corp. and the Los Angeles Police Department’s COMPSTAT unit, which is recognized for its crime data analysis.

Indeed, the Fire Department hopes to roll out its own version of the LAPD’s data-reporting system, called FIRESTATLA. It would allow managers, elected officials and the public access to regularly updated reports on detailed response times and other statistics by neighborhood, Skobin said. The new system is estimated to cost up to $500,000, he said.

In March, fire officials acknowledged that they had changed the way in which they evaluated response times without telling the public or city officials. Their method made it appear that crews surpassed national standards more frequently than they actually did.

Those faulty statistics were used by Cummings and other top fire officials to push for a new cost-cutting deployment plan that shut down firetrucks and ambulances at more than one-fifth of the city's 106 firehouses. Cummings initially defended the department’s data when questions arose about its accuracy.

Later, he acknowledged that yet another set of numbers used in reports on the proposed deployment changes were projections, not actual response times. Some council members said they might not have voted for the budget cuts had they been aware that projections were used.

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EBay's P2P Same-Day Delivery App Launches in NYC

Just in time for Black Friday, eBay is offering New Yorkers a new way to sit out the madness. Instead of waiting in line, shoppers can use the eBay Now same-day delivery app to send eBay couriers to major chain stores to buy for them.

After being beta-tested in San Francisco in recent months, eBay Now is launching today for anyone with an iPhone south of 125th Street in Manhattan or in Brooklyn’s western reaches. Unlike similar offerings being tested by Walmart and Amazon, which rely on their own inventory, eBay Now works more like a peer-to-peer network, connecting shoppers with participating stores nearby while eBay acts as a go-between. And the stores aren’t obscure. Macy’s, Toys”R”Us, Target, and Best Buy are among what eBay says are hundreds of retailers taking part.

Also, unlike Walmart’s and Amazon’s offerings, eBay doesn’t require placing an order before a certain cutoff time. Its network of couriers, which it calls “valets,” are stationed throughout the city, with more personnel clustered around areas with higher concentrations of customers and stores. When a shopper places an order through the location-aware app, it goes out to the valet in the best place to fulfill the order the most quickly. The company promises to make most deliveries in an hour or so, though for now eBay valets have to wait in line at the checkout counter like everyone else. The minimum order is $25, shoppers can only order from one store per delivery, and there’s a $5 delivery fee.

The service fits eBay’s effort to re-brand itself as more than an auction site. The company wants people to think of eBay as a place to get anything and everything. And as the distinctions between offline and online retail fall away, eBay also wants shoppers to feel like they can get their stuff whenever, wherever, and however they want.

Short of opening their own stores, the network of retailers participating in eBay Now give eBay a surrogate physical footprint, and a way to approximate the immediacy of walking into an actual store. In a way, eBay Now doesn’t stray that far from the company’s roots: Just think of the stores as typical eBay sellers, except with more inventory.

Launching eBay Now in New York also invites the inevitable comparisons to famous dotcom-bubble failure Kozmo.com, which used bike messengers to bring New Yorkers just about anything in about an hour. Unlike Kozmo, however, same-day delivery isn’t eBay’s core business. Kozmo also didn’t charge a delivery fee or require a minimum order amount. (Also, eBay’s couriers use their own cars.)

As a company that survived the first dotcom bust and sees tens of billions of dollars in transactions move across its network each year, eBay has no doubt done the math to figure out how same-day fits into their business plans. EBay Now isn’t so much a reinvention as a small-scale investment in new infrastructure — infrastructure eBay needs to have in place as the anytime, anywhere, any way model of retail catalyzed by smartphones evolves from novelty to norm.

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French mayor ends hunger strike after crisis aid

PARIS (Reuters) – A French mayor who went on hunger strike a week ago to demand emergency aid for his town ended his protest on Thursday and packed up the tent he had been sleeping in outside parliament after the government met his demands.

“I regret that things came to that but it was necessary,” Stephane Gatignon, mayor of Sevran, a poor town on the outskirts of Paris, told Reuters.

Gatignon slept six nights on the pavement outside the National Assembly to press his demand for 5 million euros ($ 6.4 million) of rescue aid, saying the economic crisis was pushing Sevran and dozens of other poor towns to the brink of ruin.

France’s cash-strapped government is seeking to slash its deficit in line with broader efforts to end a debt crisis that has plagued Europe for three years.

While the government is urging local authorities to do their part, it will increase aid to many of the poorest towns next year in a budget package that the lower house of parliament approved this week.

Gatignon said the government had indicated it was willing to deploy those funds in a way that would satisfy his demands. The office of urban affairs minister Francois Lamy did not respond to requests for comment.

The Sevran mayor looked weary but relieved after six days of consuming nothing but sugary tea.

“Today it’ll be a bit of broth, then some soup and slowly back to normal eating,” Gatignon said.

(Reporting by Emile Picy and Brian Love; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall and Robin Pomeroy)

Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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I Was Misinformed: The Time She Tried Viagra

I have noticed, in the bragging-rights department, that “he doesn’t need Viagra” has become the female equivalent of the male “and, I swear, she’s a real blonde.” Personally, I do not care a bit. To me, anything that keeps you happy and in the game is a good thing.

But then, I am proud to say, I was among the early, and from what I gather, rare female users.

It happened when the drug was introduced around 1998. I was 50, but after chemotherapy for breast cancer — and later, advanced ovarian cancer — I was, hormonally speaking, pretty much running on fumes. Whether this had diminished my sex drive I did not yet know. One may have Zorba-esque impulses when a cancer diagnosis first comes in; but a treatment that leaves you bald, moon-faced and exhausted knocks that out of your system pretty fast.

But by 1998, the cancer was gone, my hair was back and I was ready to get back in the game. I was talking to an endocrinologist when I brought up Viagra. This was not to deal with the age-related physical changes I knew it would not address, it was more along the feminist lines of equal pay for equal work: if men have this new sex drug, I want this new sex drug.

“I know it’s supposed to work by increasing blood flow,” I told the doctor, “But if that’s true for men, shouldn’t it be true for women, too?”

“You’re the third woman who asked me that this week,” he said.

He wrote me a prescription. I was not seeing anyone, so I understood that I would have to do both parts myself, but that was fine. I have a low drug threshold and figured it might be best the first time to fly solo. My memory of the directions are hazy: I think there was a warning that one might have a facial flush or headaches or drop dead of a heart attack; that you were to take a pill at least an hour before you planned to get lucky, and, as zero hour approached, you were supposed to help things along by thinking beautiful thoughts, kind of like Peter Pan teaching Wendy and the boys how to fly.

But you know how it is: It’s hard to think beautiful thoughts when you’re wondering, “Is it happening? Do I feel anything? Woof, woof? Hello, sailor? Naaah.”

After about an hour, however, I was aware of a dramatic change. I had developed a red flush on my face; I was a hot tomato, though not the kind I had planned. I had also developed a horrible headache. The sex pill had turned into a bad joke: Not now, honey, I have a headache.

I put a cold cloth on my head and went to sleep. But here’s where it got good: When I slept, I dreamed; one of those extraordinary, sensual, swimming in silk sort of things. I woke up dazed and glowing with just one thought: I gotta get this baby out on the highway and see what it can do.

A few months later I am fixed up with a guy, and after a time he is, under the Seinfeldian definition of human relations (Saturday night date assumed) my official boyfriend. He is middle aged, in good health. How to describe our romantic life with the delicacy a family publication requires? Perhaps a line from “Veronika, der Lenz ist da” (“Veronica, Spring Is Here”), a song popularized by the German group the Comedian Harmonists: “Veronika, der Spargel Wächst” (“Veronica, the asparagus are blooming”). On the other hand, sometimes not. And so, one day, I put it out there in the manner of sport:

“Want to drop some Viagra?” I say.

Here we go again, falling into what I am beginning to think is an inevitable pattern: lying there like a lox, or two loxes, waiting for the train to pull into the station. (Yes, I know it’s a mixed metaphor, but at least I didn’t bring in the asparagus.) So there we are, waiting. And then, suddenly, spring comes to Suffolk County. It’s such a presence. I’m wondering if I should ask it if it hit traffic on the L.I.E. We sit there staring.

My reaction is less impressive. I don’t get a headache this time. And romantically, things are more so, but not so much that I feel compelled to try the little blue pills again.

Onward roll the years. I have a new man in my life, who is 63. He does have health problems, for which his doctor prescribes an E.D. drug. I no longer have any interest in them. My curiosity has been satisfied. Plus I am deeply in love, an aphrodisiac yet to be encapsulated in pharmaceuticals.

We take a vacation in mountain Mexico. We pop into a drugstore to pick up sunscreen and spot the whole gang, Cialis, Viagra, Levitra, on a shelf at the checkout counter. No prescription needed in Mexico, the clerk says. We buy all three drugs and return to the hotel. I try some, he tries some. In retrospect, given the altitude and his health, we are lucky we did not kill him. I came across an old photo the other day. He is on the bed, the drugs in their boxes lined up a in a semi-circle around him. He looks a bit dazed and his nose is red.

Looking at the picture, I wonder if he had a cold.

Then I remember: the flush, the damn flush. If I had kids, I suppose I would have to lie about it.

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Wal-Mart Inquiry Reflects Alarm on Corruption

Wal-Mart on Thursday reported that its investigation into violations of a federal antibribery law had extended beyond Mexico to China, India and Brazil, some of the retailer’s most important international markets.

The disclosure, made in a regulatory filing, suggests Wal-Mart has uncovered evidence into potential violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, as the fallout continues from a bribery scheme involving the opening of stores in Mexico that was the subject of a New York Times investigation in April.

The announcement underscores the degree to which Wal-Mart recognizes that corruption may have infected its international operations, and reflects a growing alarm among the company’s internal investigators. People with knowledge of the matter described how a relatively routine compliance audit rapidly transformed into a full-blown investigation late last year — involving hundreds of lawyers and three former federal prosecutors — when the company learned that The Times was examining problems with its operations in Mexico.

A person with direct knowledge of the company’s internal investigation cautioned that Thursday’s disclosure did not mean Wal-Mart had concluded it had paid bribes in China, India and Brazil. But it did indicate that the company had found enough evidence to justify concern about its business practices in the three countries — concerns that go beyond initial inquiries and that are serious enough that shareholders needed to be told.

A Wal-Mart spokesman declined to elaborate on the filing.

The Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission, with Wal-Mart’s cooperation, are also looking into the company’s compliance with the antibribery law.

The Times reported in April that seven years ago, Wal-Mart had found credible evidence that its Mexican subsidiary had paid bribes in its effort to build more stores, a violation of the corrupt practices act, and that an internal investigation had been suppressed by executives at the company’s Arkansas headquarters.

Wal-Mart has so far spent $35 million on a compliance program that began in the spring, and has more than 300 outside lawyers and accountants working on it, the company said. It has spent $99 million in nine months on the current investigation.

Consequences of the expanding investigation could include slower expansion overseas and the identification of even more problems. The company said in the filing on Thursday that new inquiries had begun in countries “including but not limited to” China, India and Brazil.

While the disclosure did not specify the nature of the possible bribery problems in the three countries, it “clearly will cause more scrutiny on every real estate project being considered, and one would think at the minimum it will slow down the process as more controls need to be passed through,” said Colin McGranahan, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein.

International growth is critical to Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, and Brazil, India, China and Mexico together make up the largest portion of the company’s foreign locations.

Wal-Mart’s international division had been on a growth binge, though that has been slowing lately. In third-quarter results reported Thursday, the company said international sales rose 2.4 percent to $33.2 billion, making up about 29 percent of the company’s overall sales.

More than half of Wal-Mart’s 10,150 stores are international. Mexico has 2,230 stores. Brazil has 534, China, 384.

C. Douglas McMillon, chief executive of Walmart International, said in June that he did not expect the investigation to hinder international growth. “Only time will tell,” he said.

Wal-Mart’s expanding investigation began in spring 2011 as a relatively routine audit of how well its foreign subsidiaries were complying with its anticorruption policies. It is keeping the Justice Department and the S.E.C. apprised of the investigation.

The review was initiated by Jeffrey J. Gearhart, Wal-Mart’s general counsel, who had seen news reports about how Tyson Foods had been charged with relatively minor violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. He decided it made sense to test Wal-Mart’s internal defenses against corruption.

The audit began in Mexico, China and Brazil, the countries Wal-Mart executives considered the most likely source of problems. Wal-Mart hired the accounting firm KPMG and the law firm Greenberg Traurig to conduct the audit. The firms conducted interviews and spot checks of record systems to check whether Wal-Mart’s subsidiaries were carrying out required compliance procedures.

Charlie Savage, Vikas Bajaj and Andrew Downie contributed reporting.

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October home sales hit 3-year high; prices up 17% year over year

Consumer columnist David Lazarus talks with real estate reporter Alejandro Lazo, DataQuick analyst Andrew LePage and Bill McBride of the Calculated Risk blog about the strong October real estate numbers.

Southern California's real estate market bucked the typical fall slowdown last month, with buyers snapping up pricier homes and sales roaring up 18% over the prior month.

Sales hit a three-year high for an October, rising 25% from the same month last year. The median sale price for a Southland house last month was $315,000, equal to September and up 17% from October 2011, according to real estate research firm DataQuick.

A decline in the number of foreclosed homes has caused a shortage of inventory in entry-level neighborhoods, pushing up home prices. Demand from investors also remains strong, with these buyers snapping up a near-record level of homes last month.

"There is a growing appreciation of the fact that we've come to a sort of a point of inflection in the housing market," Stuart Gabriel, director of UCLA's Ziman Center for Real Estate, said. "The housing market, for a large number of factors, is perceived as having turned a corner."

The region's median hit bottom at $247,000 in April 2009 and has slowly crawled its way up since. The median is the point at which half the homes in the area sold for more and half for less.

Quiz: Test your knowledge of business news

The rebound stems from more people chasing fewer homes. Interest rates remain near record-low levels, luring buyers. Investors with cash have poured into the market looking for cheap properties to flip or rent. And foreclosure resales have sunk to a five-year low, tightening the supply of cheap homes.

An estimated 21,075 newly built and previously owned houses and condominiums sold throughout the region last month. Coastal markets saw the biggest increases in sales — though every county posted double-digit gains compared with October last year. Orange County saw the biggest surge, with sales up 41%. Ventura rose 35%, San Diego, 31%, Los Angeles, 25%, San Bernardino, 18% and Riverside 13%.

Absentee buyers — investors and some second-home buyers — snapped up a near-record 28% of homes throughout the Southland last month. These investors paid a median $245,000, a 23% increase from October last year.

A recent report by real estate website Zillow showed that many investors and others are paying market value for foreclosed homes in the region, erasing the discount between foreclosed homes and regular properties. Discounts were marginal on bank-owned homes in September, with the discount in the Inland Empire just 2% and in the Los Angeles area 4% in September, Zillow said.

Bruce Norris, president of Norris Group, an investment company in Riverside that buys foreclosed homes, said he expects prices to increase in coming years as the Obama administration has encouraged banks to curtail foreclosures. That will push up prices, he said.

"It is policy driven," Norris said. "Since the policy is going to continue … you are about to see a pretty substantial price increase within the next two years."

Indeed, the high level of affordability ushered in by the housing crash could erode quickly in California. This week the California Assn. of Realtors reported that homes in the state are getting less affordable as property values rise. The group estimated that 49% of home buyers in the third quarter could afford a median-priced house in California, a decline from 51% last quarter. The rise in prices is offsetting the benefit to home shoppers from low mortgage interest rates.

Christopher Thornberg, a principal at Beacon Economics and one of the first to call attention to the housing bubble, said home shoppers should expect expensive housing in the Golden State for the foreseeable future. The reason: Construction of new homes remains highly expensive for builders.

"Why would it stop?" he said. "The economy is growing. Short of a fiscally led second recession, there is no reason in the world that it's going to do anything but to continue."

The region's lowest-cost areas — often those the most starved for inventory these days — posted the weakest sales numbers last month, according to DataQuick. The number of homes that sold below $200,000 in the region dropped 11% from October last year. Sales in these markets have slowed because of the drop in foreclosures, while increased demand has pushed up prices.

Sales of previously foreclosed-upon homes made up just 16% of the resale market last month, a drop from 17% last month and 33% in October 2011. Foreclosure resales peaked at 57% in February 2009.

In the meantime, sales surged in several mid- and higher-cost neighborhoods throughout Southern California in October, DataQuick said. Sales of homes between $300,000 and $800,000 increased 42% year over year. Sales of homes costing more than $500,000 were up 55% and sales of homes more than $800,000 rose 52%.

Bill McBride, lead writer for the housing blog Calculated Risk, said that with the upswing in prices homeowners are encouraged to keep their homes off the market.

"Why is there no inventory? I ask every real estate agent that, just to hear what they tell me. And they say people don't have enough equity in their homes and so they aren't listing them," McBride said. "That is a solid argument. But I also think the people are sensing that prices are going up and there is no urgency to sell."

alejandro.lazo@latimes.com

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'Shirtless' FBI Agent Who Hunted Petraeus Helped Stop LA Bombing

The FBI agent responsible for the downfall of two of the military’s most respected generals helped stop a terrorist from bombing Los Angeles International Airport and shot a man who attacked him with a knife at the gates of a military base. And he kicked off an investigation that not only upended Washington, it has many wondering if the FBI exceeded its authority.

Meet Frederick W. Humphries II — finally. Humphries, identified by The New York Times, is the mystery Florida-based FBI agent central to the ongoing scandal that brought down CIA Director David Petraeus and threatens the career of the Afghanistan war commander. At nearly every key moment in the tawdry sex scandal, Humphries has been there, lurking in the shadows, sometimes without his shirt on. No wonder colleagues interviewed by the Times described him as “obsessive.” Even before anyone knew who he was, someone set up a parody Twitter account for him, @shirtlessFBIguy.

In 1999, Humphries used his French language skills to find and stop Ahmed Ressam from bombing LAX airport in what would come to be known as the Millennium Plot, according to a Seattle Times piece. Described as “wiry [and] high-energy,” the former Army officer unraveled the cover story of a member of the Millennium Plot by calling bull on the operative’s fake Quebecois accent. Eleven years later, Humphries would shoot and kill a “disturbed knife-wielding man” who attacked him at the gates of MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa.

Humphries knew Tampa socialite Jill Kelley, an unofficial “ambassador” between Tampa and MacDill, home of U.S. Central Command, run in 2010 and 2011 by Petraeus and Gen. John Allen, now the commander of the Afghanistan war. When Kelley started receiving harassing e-mails this summer, Kelley asked her FBI friend Humphries to look into it. Humphries agreed, but soon found himself taken off the case, according to the Times. That would prove to be a fateful move.

The FBI has broad authorities over cyber-stalking investigations. “When something of this nature comes to our attention,” spokesman Paul Bresson tells Danger Room, “we work in close coordination with prosecutors to evaluate the facts and circumstances with respect to jurisdiction and potential violations of federal law.”

Not everyone is buying that the FBI would normally take up the case of a socialite receiving unwanted, nasty e-mails. “This is highly irregular. Highly, highly irregular. With a case of e-mail harassment, we’d normally say: we’re kind of busy, contact your local police,” a former federal prosecutor tells Danger Room. “You know that old cliche ‘let’s not make a federal case out of it?’ Well, in this case, it rings true.”

In any case, the feds did make a federal case out of it — just without Humphries. But Humphries didn’t let the case go. He sent shirtless pictures of himself to Kelley, something a lawyer for a law-enforcement guild who spoke with Humphries described to the Times as a “joke” that the national media have misunderstood. Still, his friends characterized him as “passionate” and “kind of an obsessive type.” It showed.

Humphries did not take kindly to being removed from a case he kickstarted. Evidently, he knew that the FBI expanded the case from cyber-harassment to one determining whether Paula Broadwell, Petraeus’ mistress who harassed Kelley, received classified information from Petraeus. Humphries was convinced there was a Bureau cover-up to protect Obama, and in late October went to Rep. Dave Reichert, a Washington state Republican with whom Reichert had worked previously. Reichert — who would not respond to Danger Room’s queries — took Humphries to Rep. Eric Cantor, the GOP majority leader, on October 27.

Cantor and his staff met with Humphries shortly after Reichert made the introduction. But they did not know what his motivations were. Nor could they judge Humphries’ credibility. Worse, they had no idea the FBI had Petraeus under investigation in the first place. After conferencing, they decided the prudent thing to do was to take the information from the investigation to FBI Director Robert Mueller’s office. They did so on October 31, around the same time that FBI agents interviewed Petraeus and reportedly told him he was not under suspicion of leaking classified information.

A week later, on November 6 — election day — Mueller informed James Clapper, the director of national intelligence and Petraeus’ boss, of the investigation. The House Judiciary Committee has written to Mueller to determine, among other things, why Mueller waited a week, and why he informed neither the relevant congressional oversight committees or the White House. (Mueller on Wednesday briefed the leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees.) But Clapper essentially sealed Petraeus’ fate, urging him to deliver the resignation from the CIA that ultimately came on Friday.

There are questions about whether the FBI has exceeded its bounds in the case Humphries launched. While the FBI has wide latitude to investigate potential leaks of classified intelligence — the focus of the ongoing inquiry into Broadwell that brought Petraeus down — it is far less clear what authority the FBI had to give the Pentagon flirtatious emails between Allen and Kelley that came to agents’ attention in the course of that inquiry.

The Pentagon, whose inspector general is now investigating Allen, says there is no evidence Allen gave Kelley classified material or otherwise compromised national security. Under the Uniformed Code of Military Justice, adultery is a crime. But a Defense official on Tuesday told reporters that Allen denies cheating on his wife, and the emails contain some “flirtatious” exchanges between the two. Yet while the so-called “Plain Sight Doctrine” holds that investigators can pursue evidence of a crime that they encounter in an unrelated investigation, flirtation is not evidence of adultery.

While many of the facts of Allen’s case have yet to be determined, some legal experts wonder if the FBI was required to ignore the emails between Allen and Kelley.

“Whether the supposed basis for the investigation was cyber-harassment, disclosure of classified information, or the vulnerability of the CIA chief to blackmailing, it’s difficult to see how a military commander’s flirtatious emails are relevant,” says Rachel Levinson-Waldman, a lawyer who studies information sharing between national-security agencies at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice. In such a case, the FBI is usually required to “minimize” — that is, ignore or destroy — information on unrelated parties that it inadvertently collected. In practice, though, Levinson-Waldman cautions, FBI officials have strong incentives to hold on to such material, for fear of jeopardizing potential future investigations.

The FBI, argues the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Kurt Opsahl, appears to have engaged in “a series of stretches,” to get from investigating Broadwell to turning over Allen’s communications with Kelley to the Defense Department. “I don’t see how that email [traffic] is necessary or how there’s any kind of probable cause to believe there’s any link to the crimes the FBI was investigating,” Opsahl says.

In a statement released by his military lawyer late Wednesday, Allen vowed “to fully cooperate with the Inspector General Investigators” while his nomination to be NATO commander is officially on hold. There’s a possibility that Allen will be vindicated. But if he’s not, he has overzealous FBI investigators to thank — including Humphries, who started it all.

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NBC names new “Today” show chiefs

(Reuters) – Comcast‘s NBC has appointed two executives to take charge of the “Today” show, a day after the television network announced that longtime producer Jim Bell would be leaving to take a larger role in the sports division.

Don Nash, a broadcast producer who has worked on NBC’s morning show for 23 years, will become the executive producer, reporting to Alexandra Wallace, who has been named executive in charge of the show.

The reshuffling is part of NBC efforts to revive the “Today” show, which has been in a back-and-forth ratings war with ABC’s “Good Morning America” ever since ABC snapped NBC’s 16-year unbeaten streak earlier in the year.

“Today” is one of NBC’s most profitable TV shows, generating $ 485 million in ad revenues in 2011, up 6.6 percent from 2010, according to Kantar Media, which provides data to advertisers. Rival “Good Morning America” took in $ 299 million last year.

NBC said on Tuesday that former executive producer Bell would be leaving the morning show to become a full-time executive producer of the Olympics. The network has a contract to broadcast the Olympics in the United States for the next four games in Russia, Brazil, South Korea and an unnamed host city in 2020.

Bell, who has headed the show since 2005, was blamed this year for the controversial firing of Ann Curry as anchor alongside Matt Lauer.

Reuters had previously reported in August that Bell was in line for a kind of uber-producing sports role like the one Dick Ebersol – NBC’s longtime Olympics executive producer and former sports chief who served as a mentor to Bell – played for the network.

(Reporting By Liana B. Baker; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Alzheimer’s Tied to Mutation Harming Immune Response

Alzheimer’s researchers and drug companies have for years concentrated on one hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease: the production of toxic shards of a protein that accumulate in plaques on the brain.

But now, in a surprising coincidence, two groups of researchers working from entirely different starting points have converged on a mutated gene involved in another aspect of Alzheimer’s disease: the immune system’s role in protecting against the disease. The mutation is suspected of interfering with the brain’s ability to prevent the buildup of plaque.

The discovery, researchers say, provides clues to how and why the disease progresses. The gene, known as TREM2, is only the second found to increase Alzheimer’s risk substantially in older people.

“It points very specifically to a potential metabolic pathway that you could intervene in to change the course of Alzheimer’s disease,” said William Thies, chief medical and scientific officer of the Alzheimer’s Association.

Much work remains to be done before scientists understand precisely how the newly discovered gene mutation leads to Alzheimer’s, but already there are some indications from studies in mice. When the gene is not mutated, white blood cells in the brain spring into action, gobbling up and eliminating the plaque-forming toxic protein, beta amyloid. As a result, Alzheimer’s can be staved off or averted.

But when the gene is mutated, the brain’s white blood cells are hobbled, making them less effective in their attack on beta amyloid.

People with the mutated gene have a threefold to fivefold increase in the likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s disease in old age.

The intact gene, says John Hardy of University College London, “is a safety net.” And those with the mutation, he adds, “are living life without a safety net.” Dr. Hardy is lead author of one of the papers.

The discovery also suggests that a new type of drug could be developed to enhance the gene’s activity, perhaps allowing the brain’s white blood cells to do their work.

“The field is in desperate need of new therapeutic agents,” said Alison Goate, an Alzheimer’s researcher at Washington University in St. Louis who contributed data to Dr. Hardy’s study. “This will give us an alternative approach.”

The fact that two research groups converged on the same gene gives experts confidence in the findings. Both studies were published online Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine. “Together they make a good case that this really is an Alzheimer’s gene,” said Gerard Schellenberg, an Alzheimer’s researcher at the University of Pennsylvania who was not involved with the work.

The other gene found to raise the odds that a person will get Alzheimer’s, ApoE4, is much more common and confers about the same risk as the mutated version of TREM2. But it is still not clear why ApoE4, discovered in 1993, makes Alzheimer’s more likely.

Because the mutations in the newly discovered gene are rare, occurring in no more than 2 percent of Alzheimer’s patients, it makes no sense to start screening people for them, Dr. Thies said. Instead, the discovery provides new clues to the workings of Alzheimer’s disease.

To find the gene, a research group led by Dr. Kari Stefansson of deCODE Genetics of Iceland started with a simple question.

“We asked, ‘Can we find anything in the genome that separates those who are admitted to nursing homes before the age of 75 and those who are still living at home at 85?’ ” he said.

Scientists searched the genomes of 2,261 Icelanders and zeroed in on TREM2. Mutations in that gene were more common among people with Alzheimer’s, as well as those who did not have an Alzheimer’s diagnosis but who had memory problems and might be on their way to developing Alzheimer’s.

The researchers confirmed their results by looking for the gene in people with and without Alzheimer’s in populations studied at Emory University, as well as in Norway, the Netherlands and Germany.

The TREM2 connection surprised Dr. Stefansson. Although researchers have long noticed that the brain is inflamed in Alzheimer’s patients, he had dismissed inflammation as a major factor in the disease.

“I was of the opinion that the immune system would play a fairly small role, if any, in Alzheimer’s disease,” Dr. Stefansson said. “This discovery cured me of that bias.”

Meanwhile, Dr. Hardy and Rita Guerreiro at University College London, along with Andrew Singleton at the National Institute on Aging, were intrigued by a strange, rare disease. Only a few patients had been identified, but their symptoms were striking. They had crumbling bones and an unusual dementia, sclerosing leukoencephalopathy.

“It’s a weird disease,” Dr. Hardy said.

He saw one patient in her 30s whose brain disease manifested in sexually inappropriate behavior. Also, her bones kept breaking. The disease was caused by mutations that disabled both the copy of TREM2 that she had inherited from her mother and the one from her father.

Eventually the researchers searched for people who had a mutation in just one copy of TREM2. To their surprise, it turned out that these people were likely to have Alzheimer’s disease.

They then asked researchers around the world who had genetic data from people with and without Alzheimer’s to look for TREM2 mutations.

“Sure enough, they had good evidence,” Dr. Hardy said. The mutations occurred in one-half of 1 percent of the general population but in 1 to 2 percent of patients with Alzheimer’s disease.

“That is a big effect,” Dr. Hardy said.

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Obama Meets C.E.O.’s as Fiscal Reckoning Nears

Luke Sharrett for The New York Times

Ursula M. Burns, chief of Xerox, said the president discussed few specifics of a potential agreement but emphasized that “we cannot go over the fiscal cliff.”

WASHINGTON — President Obama extended an olive branch to business leaders Wednesday, seeking their support as he prepared to negotiate with Congressional Republicans over the fiscal impasse in Washington.

If Congress and the president cannot reach a deal to reduce the deficit by January, more than $600 billion in tax increases and spending cuts will go into effect immediately — a prospect many chief executives and others warn could tip the economy back into recession.

Even so, Mr. Obama has some fence-mending to do before he can count on any serious backing from the business community.

“The president brought up that he hadn’t always had the best relationship with business, and he didn’t think he deserved that, but he understood that’s where things were and wanted it to be better,” said David M. Cote, chief executive of Honeywell. He was one of a dozen corporate leaders invited to meet Mr. Obama at the White House for 90 minutes Wednesday afternoon, after the president’s first news conference since the election.

While Mr. Obama did not present a detailed plan at Wednesday’s meeting or reveal what he would propose in terms of new corporate taxes, he strongly reiterated that he would not allow tax cuts for the middle class to expire. The president, according to attendees and aides, said he was committed to a balanced approach of reductions in entitlements and other government spending and increases in revenue.

With time running out, many observers expect the president and Republican leaders in Congress to come up with a short-term compromise that prevents the full slate of tax increases and spending cuts from hitting in January. That would give both sides more time to come up with a far-reaching deal on entitlement spending, even as they work on a broad tax overhaul later next year.

One corporate official briefed on the meeting said that the chief executives came away with a sense that Mr. Obama was poised to present a more formal proposal in the next few days, but that he did not press them for support on particular policies. “It was more of a back and forth,” he said.

The chief executives from some of the country’s biggest and best-known companies, including Procter & Gamble and I.B.M., were not unified on everything, according to one who was interviewed after the meeting.

Many of the executives who described the meeting would speak only on condition of anonymity.

The outreach to business comes as both the White House and corporate America maneuver ahead of the year-end deadline, as well as the beginning of Mr. Obama’s second term. Many executives were put off by what they saw as antibusiness rhetoric coming from the White House in his first term, and many also oppose tax increases on the rich that Mr. Obama favors but would hit them personally.

Both sides have plenty to gain from a better relationship. Business leaders want to buffer their image after the recession and the financial crisis, while Mr. Obama would gain valuable leverage if he could persuade even a few chief executives to come out in favor of higher taxes on people with incomes over $250,000.

Lloyd C. Blankfein, chief executive of Goldman Sachs, publicly endorsed higher tax rates in an opinion article published in The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.

“I believe that tax increases, especially for the wealthiest, are appropriate, but only if they are joined by serious cuts in discretionary spending and entitlements,” he wrote.

While Mr. Blankfein and other Wall Street leaders have been speaking out about the dangers of the fiscal impasse, only one executive from the financial services industry, Kenneth I. Chenault of American Express, was at Wednesday’s meeting.

Afterward, the corporate leaders seemed pleased with the tone of the meeting but cautious about the prospect of finding common ground with the White House on the budget choices facing Congress and the president.

“I’d say everybody came away feeling pretty good about the whole discussion,” Mr. Cote said. “Now, all of us are C.E.O.’s, so we’ve learned not to confuse words with results. And that’s what we still need to see.”

Ursula M. Burns, chief executive of Xerox, who was also at the meeting, said afterward that it was clear that “we’re going to have to work through some sticking points.” But while “we didn’t get into too many specifics,” she said, it was also made clear that “we cannot go over the fiscal cliff.”

Ms. Burns’s comments about the potentially dire consequences of the fiscal impasse echoed those of other chief executives, including many in the Business Roundtable, which began an ad campaign Tuesday calling on lawmakers to resolve the issue quickly. The Campaign to Fix the Debt, a new group with a $40 million budget and the support of many Fortune 500 chiefs, began its own ad campaign on Monday.

Michael T. Duke, chief executive of Wal-Mart Stores, warned in a statement after the meeting that “before the end of the year, Washington needs to find an agreement to avoid the fiscal cliff.” He said Walmart customers “are working hard to adapt to the ‘new normal,’ but their confidence is still very fragile. They are shopping for Christmas now, and they don’t need uncertainty over a tax increase.”

 

Helene Cooper reported from Washington and Nelson D. Schwartz from New York. Jackie Calmes contributed reporting from Washington.

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